


Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?

by Sroloc_Elbisivni



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Camping, Fake alien chemistry, Pining, Pre-Canon, Pre-Cybertronian Civil War, Pre-Relationship, Two assholes driving each other up the wall as a love language, Worldbuilding, biopolitics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:08:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27752839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sroloc_Elbisivni/pseuds/Sroloc_Elbisivni
Summary: On Cybertron, before the war, Megatronus and Orion Pax go camping together. It's a learning experience.
Relationships: Megatron & Orion Pax, Megatron/Optimus Prime, Megatron/Orion Pax
Comments: 13
Kudos: 75





	Will you give me yourself? will you come travel with me?

**Author's Note:**

> I almost named this "rude, unbending, lusty"--which, like the title, is from [Walt Whitman,](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48859/song-of-the-open-road) because what else are you going to use for a couple of guys being dudes being gay. 
> 
> Fun fact! In the Aligned continuity canon [ (for like one paragraph in the Covenant of Primus)](https://sroloc--elbisivni.tumblr.com/post/636001338653818880/oodlekode-papercricketgallery-so-uhh-how) Orion Pax just lived in the wilds of Cybertron before coming to work at the Hall of Records. I'm gleefully ignoring the Exodus novel and declaring this fic technically canon compliant. 
> 
> There is no plot here. This is a homoerotic cowboy novel in space.

“Vacation.” Megatronus rolled the word around his mouth suspiciously. “So I can keep track of people’s problems while I’m somewhere where I can’t do anything about them?”

Orion ran a vent cycle and put down the datapad he was looking at. “If you don’t get some time away from this soon, your processor is going to be too overclocked to pay attention.”

“I didn’t get _vacations_ in the Arena,” Megatronus muttered. 

“I wasn’t aware you had come to regard your former profession as a paragon of employment,” Orion said, expression and EM field both blank. 

Megatronus glared at him until his field splashed with amusement at the lack of rebuttal. 

“Besides, I was thinking we could get out of the cities entirely. Be beyond the network for a bit."

“We?” Megatronus pulled in his field before it could carry his rising interest. “You intend to invite yourself along?”

“I’m inviting _you_ along. I try to spend some time outside Iacon every couple of vorns. Now that you don’t have other obligations in Kaon, and while the Senate is in recess, it seems an appropriate time to beg your company. If you have no objections to a few cycles in the Wastelands, that is.” Orion’s tone turned teasing. “If you have ways you would prefer to spend your time that didn’t involve potential wild animals, though, I wouldn’t blame you.”

This was a trap. Although Megatronus couldn’t have said whether it was more obnoxious that Orion was laying such an _obvious_ trap, or that the idea of wandering the wilds with his sword on his back, fending off any dangers that might try to approach his favorite archivist, didn’t have a certain appeal. 

“Please. After arguing with Senate secretaries about registering political parties? I’m itching for an opponent I can actually stab.” 

Orion laughed, and the sound made Megatronus’s plating relax and shuffle smooth, trying to look appealing. He opened it back up with a rushed out-vent, pulling in fresh air to cool his processor already rushing to conjure up scenarios of fending off a horde of turbo-foxes while Orion guarded his back, the two of them huddled in some cave together under a single tarp, Orion tucked under his arm for protection—

Hm. Maybe Orion had a point about his processor getting overclocked.

* * *

Megatronus had spent very little time outside the cities. According to some of the older gladiators, it had once been fashionable for noble-caste mechs to go on hunting forays, and sometimes they would pay for the services of strong, strapping warriors they could show off in front of. Or just use to carry their things. Renting, not hiring, since the money went straight to managers. The practice was passé by the time Megatronus had made enough of a reputation to draw anyone’s interest. Nobles had been more interested in hiring his frame for other things. 

This was all to say, following after Orion was a closer look at the rolling stone plains than Megatronus had ever gotten from the windows of a rail transport. They had been following the tracks initially, when they set out at dawn, but Orion had turned away after a while, following the arc of the sun further into the mesas and rock formations and crystal-lattice scrub.

Megatronus in tank form couldn’t move as fast as Orion’s scrappy hauler alt mode over solid ground, but he was discovering a certain impish delight in gaining the lead over sandy areas where his treads got a better grip than Orion’s wheels. Orion graciously let him wait at the edge of sand patches and rev his engine smugly two times. The third time he rang his proximity gong loudly in Megatronus’s face and took off at top speed into a nearby canyon.

Megatronus laughed into the open air and chased after him. It was a beautiful day, the sky a delicate shade of lavender that made him think of energon crystallized to the point of being wafer-thin. The wind was whirling against his plating, lending him an even greater sense of speed, and Iacon was long behind them. Not even the Archive or the Senate buildings could send signals out, this far from the towers and this far below the satellites. The only points of connection flickering against his awareness were Orion, racing ahead, and the steady, ancient hum of Cybertron pulsing slow against his treads. All the clarity of a fight with none of the bloodlust.

The canyons wound around each other like the streets of Kaon near the Arena, tunneling and close and suspicious. Megatronus had to go carefully, especially on turns that grew almost too tight for his width. This deep in the mesas, the sounds were different, shaped strangely by the stone. The wind blew fierce against his audials. The occasional cracks in the ground rattled and sparked as he went past. Rockfalls crashed in the distance.

“Oriiiion,” he called, listening to it echo. There was no response. “Orion Pax.” He tried not to sound like he was laughing. Orion was always annoyed when Megatronus laughed at him. “If I concede you’re faster, will you come out?”

No response except the echo of Orion’s gong. Megatronus sprang forward again, treads grinding against the ground. 

“Are you going to run from me forever?” He cut up a boulder, getting a glimpse of red and blue from the top and gunning his engine a bit more. “I’ll catch you! Eventually.”

No gong this time. Was Orion being sneaky? 

Or…had something happened to him? If a rockfall got him, if a crack opened in the wrong place, would Megatronus even hear what happened in the midst of all the other natural noise?

He ruthlessly suppressed a shiver of fear from rattling his gears. Orion was no nervous Towers mech, no delicate crystal. He wouldn’t crack for being out of Megatronus’s sight. 

Besides. If he knew Megatronus was worrying about him, the teasing would be soft, subtle, and relentless. 

“I don’t suppose you’ll come out if I say I’ve learned my lesson?” Megatronus slowed as the canyon he was following widened, trying to sound unworried. “I’m not sure you should be alone out here, after all. Who _knows_ what could happen…”

There was a trickle of sound from above, but extending his field picked up no energy, not even the impending kinetic burst of a rockfall, so he kept going. 

The impact of a solid form landing on his roof took him by so much surprise he spun his right treads backwards and crashed into the canyon wall.

Orion tumbled off in a graceful roll, still laughing. “I don’t know, Megatronus. I think you still have something to learn.” And then, like the cheeky imp that he was, he leapt up to the canyon wall and swarmed up out of sight.

“How did you do that?” Megatronus demanded, de-transforming, just to stare at where Orion had vanished. There was no response except the bright and rude ring of a gong. 

He still hadn’t worked it out by the time Orion ambushed him again. Twice. 

* * *

The second time, Megatronus was at least still in root mode, and he had enough experience fighting in it that when Orion landed on his shoulders he dropped and rolled, pinning his smaller opponent under him on reflex. 

“Got you,” he said, grinning down at the back of Orion’s neck. Orion huffed and rotated his head, tipping his optics up towards Megatronus. He pushed out against the arms holding him down once before subsiding. Something very pleased coiled in Megatronus’s internals, like smoke from a crushed enemy. Orion certainly wouldn’t be running off now. He would have to stay right where Megatronus could see him. 

He was jolted out of these pleasant musings by Orion tipping his head up and thumping it back against the ground. “I _said_ you’ve made your point. Let me up.”

“I think I like you like this,” Megatronus informed him. “You’ll get into much less trouble this way.”

“Yes, very—“ Orion abruptly stopped. “Megatronus. You’re steaming.”

“Why, thank you.” 

“It wasn’t a _compliment._ Let me up.”

Megatronus frowned, but stood up, helping Orion to his feet. Orion immediately grabbed Megatronus’s larger arm, shifting it into a shaft of sunlight to reveal that steam was, indeed, escaping the joints. “You’re literally steaming.”

“How odd.” Megatronus flexed his hand, and pulled out a cube of coolant. “I didn’t think I’d been working that hard.” Now that he was aware of it, his systems were ravenously thirsty. The first swallow produced another hiss of steam from under his plating as the liquid hit the hot coils of his tubing. 

“Drink that. _And_ this.” Orion unsubspaced another cube and watched with worried intent as Megatronus dutifully drank them both. “It’s always hotter outside the cities than mechs think. I don’t think I packed enough coolant.”

“Should we cut our trip short, then?”

“…No. No.” Orion shook his head. “I think I have a solution. Or I will. Come on.” He immediately turned and began striding off. Megatronus followed in his wake, moving more slowly as he became aware of how closely he could feel the coolant flowing through his system.

“Do you intend to pull it out of the air?”

“Not exactly.” Orion ran one hand along the canyon wall, and this time Megatronus could see where microtransformations tucked away the data ports at the tips of Orion’s fingers, allowing him to get a firm grip in cracks almost too small to see. “I need some plants.”

“Plants?”

* * *

Orion led them through the canyons at a strange, looping pace—sometimes hooking himself up the walls again in a mad scramble, walking along above Megatronus’s head for several meters and muttering to himself before jumping back down. A few times he called a warning and Megatronus braced himself to break Orion’s fall, letting the smaller bot bounce off his shoulders to the ground. It took a conscious effort not to fall into the habits of the Arena and shove him down further. 

“Having fun?” Megatronus asked, dry as his coolant tanks had been. 

“Mm.” Orion made a distracted noise and handed something off to Megatronus, who took it automatically. Upon examination, it seemed to be a sedge of some metallo-crystalline matrix he was unfamiliar with, formed in a fine lacy pattern. “Hold this. We need water.”

Megatronus considered this, checking his quartz deep memories for the sets of old mining protocols he had saved because he still sometimes had nightmares about being buried alive. “How much water?”

* * *

His old water detection programs worked just fine, it turned out. They weren’t terribly happy that he was moving _towards_ the large dihydrogen monoxide deposits instead of _away_ from them like a smart miner who wanted to keep digging and not burst work-hot plating with a sudden cold shock, but he could deal with that. Mostly by continuing to ping directional updates to Orion and following as closely in the smaller vehicle’s tire trucks as he could instead of choosing his own direction. 

Megatronus was caught up enough in following Orion that it took a moment when they stopped for him to realize that the water signal was still further ahead, inside a hole worn away in the wall of the canyon. He pinged an inquiry, and Orion sent back a request for quiet.

After a moment, he sent another request, a slow retreat, and only the emphasis glyph for _silence_ kept Megatronus’s combat protocols from booting up with an unavoidably loud noise. 

When they were several thousand astroinches back from the cave entrance, Orion pinged again. 

::I’ve got movement on sensors. Something’s living in there. We’re going to need to wait for it to leave.::

::Something?:: Megatronus readied combat protocols anyways. ::Or someone?::

::I don’t know, and I’d rather not take my chances that it’s scraplets.:: Orion hestitated. ::Though there could be a back way into the cave. If we can find it, and drive the thing out, and collapse the way behind it…::

Megatronus had a feeling that there wasn’t going to be a whole lot of _we_ involved, but he would follow Orion’s lead.

* * *

There was a back way into the cave. Megatronus was the one who found it, sending sonar pings through the loose crust plating and ore clusters of the canyon walls. Between the random assortment of things they both made a habit of carrying in their subspaces—Orion because he would rather stow things away than put them down when he got distracted, Megatronus because mine habits died hard and he didn’t trust the security of anything he couldn’t carry—Orion was able to rig a set of cables and braces in a complicated pattern that looked like something Laserbeak would make while overcharged. 

“You’re sure this will work?” Megatronus said, skeptically, not reaching anywhere near it.

“I am sure,” Orion said, firmly. “Mostly.”

_"Mostly.”_

“Even if it goes wrong, the creature should be too alarmed to do anything but keep running.” Orion adjusted some of the braces again and Megatronus had to squash three separate routines to deal with the threat of a cave-in. And a fourth that was a little too interested in calculating the outcomes of tackling Orion out of the way, especially ones that involved just…not letting him up again. “Would you rather go be threatening or engineer the collapse yourself?”

Megatronus snorted. “I wouldn’t get near your contraption for a million shanix and a chance to punch Sentinel Prime in the face.”

“I suppose that’s fair.” Orion’s field was far too amused. 

“Besides. I think between us, I’m the one who has the best chance of _actually_ being frightening.”

Orion’s expression changed to icy unamusement so quickly that Megatronus had to suppress a laugh. “Is that so.”

“Don’t misunderstand me. I’m well aware you’re capable of being an absolute terror.” He couldn’t resist. “To data worms.”

Orion zapped a pulse of staticy disapproval where the edges of their fields overlapped. Megatronus transformed and rolled away before Orion could pick up on his laughter and zap him again.

* * *

Being loud and scary was easy. After leaving the arena, Megatronus had kept his fusion cannon installed—though he had gotten it _slightly_ scaled down. Buying his way out of the arena had been a risky enough proposition, managed largely by funneling money into an account Soundwave had opened for him. He hadn’t wanted to take his chances on some disgruntled patrons or arena mob managers paying for him to have an ‘accident’ in his new life. 

He'd had to start writing subroutines so he didn’t pull it in the middle of particularly infuriating budget meetings. Personally, Megatronus felt that every budget meeting could be improved by the integration of armed combat. If he ever had enough control to set the rules of order he would make that a stipulation. 

So it had been a while since he was able to open the cannon’s particular branch of his subspace and send a blast straight up the rift of the canyon with a deeply satisfying _boom._ The resonance rattled through his chest plating, sending a hum through his spark casing, and he opened all his vents to intake enough air that he could let it out again with an echoing roar. 

It felt _good_ to fire a weapon again. He had been given a miner’s frame, he had been writing poetry and practicing his rhetoric from his earliest memories, but the Arena had made him learn to love the dizzying rush of an attack completed. 

He onlined his audials to hear no noise from inside the cave, and a quick sonar scan confirmed it. After a moment, Orion sent him a ping for ::successful operation.:: 

Megatronus sent back ::triumph,:: underlaid with the distinctive harmonics that signaled a gladiator’s success in combat. 

After a moment that felt distinctly too long, Orion sent back ::honorable surrender.:: There was a strange polyphony attached to it that Megatronus had never heard before. ::Accepted.:: 

And _that_ had the particular mixolydian cadence that to most mechs signaled the closing of a back-alley deal and to Megatronus signaled ‘Orion has once again done something stupid.’ He integrated the cannon into his tank transformation before heading back to the trap. 

The rigging was no longer fixed over the mouth of the cave and instead in a heap on the ground, cascading over a frame covered with pitted bronze enamel. Orion was currently knelt next to the cables with the wickedly sharp dagger that Megatronus had given him after they had known each other ten vorns, and he was using it to slit the restraining cables instead of the creature’s throat. Because of course he was. 

“You can’t tell me you’re letting it _go.”_ Megatronus transformed back, keeping his cannon aimed right at the creature. Orion looked up, assessed the situation, and then moved to place himself between the creature and the barrel of Megatronus’s cannon. Megatronus immediately jerked his arm up to point at the sky. ” _Orion._ Weapons safety!”

“It’s fine,” Orion said, because he was an _i_ _diot._ “I’m just loosening enough that it can get free on its own when we leave.” He was running a hum through his vents, vaguely soothing. Megatronus ignored it, because Orion wasn’t trying to soothe _him,_ he was trying to soothe the very _dangerous_ creature that would shortly no longer be restrained. “Do you want a closer look?”

“A closer look,” Megatronus repeated flatly. “At a dangerous predator you’re _releasing.”_

Orion’s field flicked a light rebuke at him, making the creature flinch. Orion lifted his hands, adding a soft “Sh, sh,” to the hum of his vents. The heap of cables settled again with a grumble. “It’s not a predator, Megatronus. It’s a pathfinder. They eat lesser mineral deposits and process them into energon.”

“They what?” Megatronus approached, still keeping his cannon raised. 

“I haven’t seen one in…centivorns. Since before I went to Iacon.” Orion returned to cutting cables with one hand, hovering the other one over the creature to sketch a bare outline. “You can see the shape of the head. They have longer intake ports than we do, full of gears for grinding, and many olfactory sensors. There are records that say before the War of the Primes Cybertronians used to follow them to find energon deposits, because they would eat the crystal deposits that formed on the surface.” He paused, knife held out speculatively. “The energon is consumable, but processing it takes time. I would rather not.”

“I’m not inclined to myself.” Megatronus let his cannon fold away, leaning closer and watching the pathfinder flinch. He could see the shape of the intake, now, and hear the restless grinding of gears. There was a very fuzzy EM field coming off of it—thin, but now that he was paying attention he could feel fear. “I’ve never heard of them. Why are we putting mecha to die in the mines when energon is just running around out here on…” He paused to count. “…twelve legs?”

“It’s not, anymore.” Orion sat back on his wheels, looking at the pathfinder. “They’re not. There used to be millions of them outside of the cities, and then…” His words trailed off and Megatronus could feel the familiar trickle of Orion running data retrieval routines wash across his field. “During the Golden Age, there was an edict passed. A reward for every one hunted down. There was evidence that pathfinders were interfering with the newly created rail system.” He rose to his full height and began to back away, still watching the pathfinder. “There are no uncorrupted image captures, but they were slaughtered in the millions. One record states that the pile of bodies at its peak stood taller than the foundries of Kaon.” 

Megatronus knew those heights intimately. Knew how many bodies could be chewed up and spat out by the heat only by accident, over the course of a vorn. It probably hadn’t taken all that long to work through a pile of metal. 

“There are murals,” Megatronus remembered, the images popping into his head. “In the old parts of Kaon, carved into the walls. They look like these.” He shook his head. "I never even thought about it.”

“You wouldn’t have to. It’s been happening so long that no one has to think about it anymore. There’s nothing left to think about.”

“Except this one.” 

“Mm.” Orion turned away, walking back through the canyons towards the mouth of the cave. Megatronus took one last look at the pathfinder, buried under cables, and saved an image capture before following. 

“How long do you think it will last?” Megatronus asked.

“I don’t know. No one’s really leaving the cities to hunt them these days, not even the nobles, and it’s not…sustainable, now, to live outside the cities. If it can find enough crystals, it could live for a while. There aren’t many predators left, either. These days, the most common living things on Cybertron are Cybertronians. And scraplets.” 

There was a _whuff_ of steam as Megatronus stretched the joints of his arm, making sure his cannon had settled correctly into subspace. Orion flickered with disapproval and handed him another cube of coolant. 

“If we fail to make more coolant, it will certainly outlive _you."_

* * *

Megatronus knew, vaguely, that water could be processed for coolant. He had seen mechs with rust infections from living too close to the vast tanks that regulated the temperatures of Kaon’s foundries, prone to oxidation from proximity to clouds of steam. That was an abstract knowledge, though, completely different from watching Orion work. 

They had dug a second pool next to the wild standing water, with a channel to move just enough liquid for their purposes into a separate area. Once Orion had a sufficient amoung and blocked the flow, he knelt next to it and started adding the metal and crystal growths in particular quantities, at particular times. Megatronus tucked the knowledge away in his own processors, tracking how much and when, but it hardly made more sense as he watched. 

After a certain point, Orion unsubspaced a small quantity of motor oil and poured it on the water before setting it on fire. Megatronus continued to watch the entire process with bemusement.

“Where did you learn how to do this?” he asked, as they sat together and watched the flames burn. 

“A mech named Steelpump,” Orion said. His optics were shining with reflected firelight, making him look like one of the statues of the ancient Primes with crystal hidden beneath their helms. “I met him in the Hexalidic forests. It is one of the oldest memories I have. I had to keep reaccessing it, when I still lived outside the cities.”

“Ah.” Megatronus was still distracted by the firelight against Orion’s faceplate. When he finally processed that statement, he had to reset his optics to look away. “When you— _what?”_

“I used to live outside the cities.” Orion’s field flickered with hesitation—an unusual shape for him. “I wasn’t onlined in Iacon. I came there later.”

Megatronus hesitated himself. He, and many others in Kaon—especially those others onlined in factory production—made a practice of scoffing at mechs who introduced themselves by the place their spark had risen from. It was too easily used as a way to judge caste. Orion himself had collected data proving that the association between hotspot and caste was more closely correlated with whatever caste the Council was trying to expand than anything else. 

But Orion had never revealed this much information about himself, and Megatronus wanted more. 

“And—before?” he asked, stumbling around the question. 

“I was outside the cities, as I said.” Now Orion’s field was trickling with amusement. He had mercy on Megatronus, as he often did, and elaborated. “Eventually around here. Before that in the Selenium Dunes, and further down the Rust Sea’s coast. I don’t remember where I was before the Hexalidic forests.” He shifted to add a little more motor oil to the burning puddle, watching the flames spark. “Did you know that if you go for too long without recharge, on low coolant, your processor starts categorizing long-term memory storage as nonessential?”

“I…didn’t.” Coolant was never in short supply in Kaon—in the mines or the Arena. It was much cheaper than energon, and if you drank enough of it you could fool your line pressure gauges, so the bosses made sure it was always available. Mining was hot work, and no one wanted to pay to see a mech collapse on the killing floor just because he was steaming at the joints. 

“It is, fortunately, a largely academic fact for most mechs,” Orion admitted. “Regardless. Large parts of my early life are inaccessible.” He leaned forward and brushed aside the burning oil, running one finger through the puddle and creating viscous ripples. “This will be drinkable soon. We can keep moving, or we can remain here and fortify this place for the night.”

Megatronus followed the subject change for now, filing away this new information about Orion to be examined later. 

* * *

Fortifying the cave for the night involved a disturbing number of traps. Megatronus stood where Orion asked him to and tied everything he could reach, slightly surprised at exactly how devious his friend was capable of being. In Megatronus’s mind, Orion Pax had always been the weaker member of their partnership, the one looking up to Megatronus. It made for a certain reassuring constancy of the universe. Now, well…it wasn’t that he thought he _couldn’t_ lay siege to anywhere he chose. It just seemed that if that place was one Orion Pax was bent on defending, the process would be long and unnecessarily painful. Megatronus got halfway through the processing thread that it was unnerving how brutal-minded Orion could be given how unassuming he looked, and then cut it off as he realized that hewed entirely too closely to Functionist propaganda. He of all mechs should know better. It was…really, it was all the more _impressive_ how brutal Orion could be given how nonthreatening he tried to appear. Perhaps he could even have survived the pit fights.

 _That_ processing thread, Orion holding his own in the violence of an Arena fight, was disturbing enough that Megatronus ripped it out and stomped on it. 

Orion sent him a concerned ping from where he was perched somewhere up by the roof of the cave. ::preparing for fight?::

“Everything is fine,” Megatronus said out loud, while he wrestled his field back under control. 

Orion did not so much climb as jump down from the ceiling, controlled falls from one ledge to another until he stood next to Megatronus and joined him in looking out into where the shadows of the canyon were thickening into twilight. “Do you want to go see the sunset?”

Megatronus looked at the wires he had just spent a long time holding in place while Orion stretched them _just so_ across the entrance. “Will we have to redo that work?”

“…I may not have thought through this order of events.” Orion’s field was sprinkled with embarrassment as he turned further back into the caves. 

They sat together, sharing a cube of the freshly produced coolant. It didn’t taste at all like the thick and smooth refinery coolant Megatronus was used to, but it slid comfortingly along his tubes. The minerals weren’t quite all the way integrated, prickling as they trickled under his armor, like a particularly inquisitive EM field. 

He shivered all his plating with a rattle, watching Orion drink his own cube in long, slow sips, optic irises relaxed to their widest setting. 

“Do you miss it out here?” Megatronus asked, suddenly desperately curious. 

Orion’s lenses cycled smaller, sharpening his vision to focus on Megatronus. For his part, Megatronus focused on staying relaxed, as casual as if he was in a local senate meeting trying to seem like he wasn’t furiously, wildly—by Iacon standards, unacceptably—invested in the issue of caste accessibility. 

After a moment, and a cycle of vents that released a waft of cool air into the cave, Orion leaned back against the cave wall. His field fell over Megatronus like a cool silver rain, a wash of different emotions. Confusion, loss, relief, ease, longing, bitterness, all tangled together. Megatronus accepted them, letting his own field wash back, ticking with a patience he was trying very hard to feel. 

“I don’t think I do,” Orion said, quietly, but every word had glyphs for _doubt_ hanging off. “I didn’t want to leave Iacon, after I arrived and they fit me into place as a data clerk. I liked learning the dialects of Cybertronix, the Primal Vernacular. I liked feeling useful. I liked the Grid, having more data than I could ever have collected on my own in one lifetime pass within my reach in one minute. But it was…” He paused, and his next words were layered with apology. “It was incredible, to me, that I could push a button and have energon come out. That easy.” 

Megatronus thought about laboring in the deepest holes of Cybertron, unimaginably deeper than any Arena pit, to wrest energon from stone and send it off, and if he was lucky to get just enough of it back to keep him going another day. Some of that slipped into his field as rattling annoyance, left over from a long and pounding anger. Orion brushed against it with a shallow wave of understanding, ignorance, apology, and kept going. 

“I came back out, at first, because I wanted to prove to myself that if It all went away I would still survive. It was easier to come back out, as well. No castes, no walls, no rules. As long as I brought my own supplies, I didn’t have to worry about surviving, either.” He looked down at his cube of coolant, raising it to his intake again. “I don’t miss struggling for survival.”

“Do you miss anything?” Megatronus didn’t know why he was asking. He was thinking about the mines again, about the Arena, about energon in stone and burning oil on water, about the older gladiators that hunted with nobles and a pathfinder struggling under piles of cables. Orion, with his dagger, cutting it free. For all the life that was left to it. 

“I miss the space,” Orion said, breaking Megatronus out of his thoughts. “I miss the plants.”

“Perhaps you can convince Iacon to grow more gardens for you,” Megatronus suggested, letting a joke that felt more gentle than any of his usual ones roll a rare sympathy through his field. He sipped from his coolant again. “Brew this in a barrel and sell it at Maccadam’s.”

Orion’s field had gone still again, only a faint soft ripple of answering pleasure drifting back. “Perhaps.”

* * *

* * *

**Coda: One War Later...**

When Soundwave delivered the information on the new Autobot outpost, Megatron had been sure this conquest would be simple. One planet, on which they aready had scouts waiting, with no larger galactic ties to speak of? He had been sure he could already taste his victory. 

Now, looking over the planet from the bridge of the Nemesis, Megatron was forced to conclude that he had been overconfident. 

“Inform the supply ships in the Delta quadrant that they are to reroute here immediately,” he snapped at Dreadwing. “Tell your scouts to hold their positions. Do not do _anything_ to reveal our presence to the Autobots.”

Dreadwing, thankfully, just said “Yes, Lord Megatron.” 

Starscream, unfortunately, was _much_ less cooperative. “You want us to _wait?_ After taking so long to _get_ here?”

Megatron scowled at him, letting his annoyance pound through his field. “Oh, Starscream, if you’re so _sure_ it’s a worthwhile endeavor—please. I _invite_ you to explore.”

In a rare show of wisdom, Starscream hesitated. Megatron smiled viciously, with all his teeth. It was almost worth hoping he’d fall for it, even if it would mean Megatron had to deal with a new second-in-command. As long as Megatron didn't have to go down first.

After all. It seemed this was an organic planet chock-full of wildlife, and Optimus Prime had been on it for _decivorns._ He probably _liked_ it down there. 

This would be a long and difficult siege, and Megatron wanted more resources _before_ he descended on a place probably booby-trapped to the Pit of Unicron and back.

**Author's Note:**

> The subjugation of nature is a mechanism of social control that extends the power of the state over life and death. Also, this is all a very long and convoluted way for me to explain my headcanon that the Autobots on Earth is a backcountry camping trip with however many kids going 'I hate it here' and Optimus as the dad who loves camping having a wonderful time.


End file.
